


Once Upon a Dream

by dizzyingly_dreamy



Series: animal I have become [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (and), (but it's not really death?), (just read and it'll make sense), Almost Kiss, Blood and Gore, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Bucky is only really mentioned for now, Character Death, Dancing, Fluff, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Hydra is a no-no, I swear, It makes sense, M/M, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Roleswap, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, bliss, he's a character in Steves memories, repeated character death, tags are out of order but whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:02:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27928729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzyingly_dreamy/pseuds/dizzyingly_dreamy
Summary: He blinked, though his eyelids were dry and they stung like lemon in a papercut. His pupils contracted and expanded in attempts to find the proper amount of dilation, and once they had, he managed to focus on the man who was standing in front of him, holding open a ruby red notebook with a black star in the center. He was wearing what looked like military clothing, khaki pants and shirt, but instead of being camo, they were black and had a red squid adorning the front, with a skull for a head.Right. Hydra. Nazis. Bad people. Very bad people. They had him, and he couldn't break free, and he just had to work on not succumbing to whatever they were trying to do. Bucky would find him. He'd come and bring him home.(or, what if Steve managed to save Bucky from falling, but as sacrifice, fell in his place?)
Relationships: (only really implied for right now), James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: animal I have become [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2045086
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	Once Upon a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> I've got another series going on right now, but I needed to take a break from it because there was a lot of stuff that wasn't making me feel good about it. and I was trying to write Stony while re-falling in love with Stucky. So, that isn't happening. 
> 
> My solution; New series. Yay! Fun times!
> 
> To be quite honest, I'm not really trying to prove anything by posting my works. I got some severely negative feedback on a work in my other series, which, I deleted, because I didn't even really like it anyways. Apparently, neither did pretty much everyone who read it. That is not to say that I can't handle critisicsm, because there was some feedback that helped me realise some things about my writing. But comments that said 'absolutely terrible' or 'really awful' don't really count as constructive feedback in my opinion. 
> 
> This series is something I needed to write, because I didn't have a good day, and Stucky is something that I will never not love, and it's my happy place. 
> 
> On that note, this is an angsty fic. Very angsty. Maybe a bit fast paced. Maybe this whole series will be. I'm gonna try to take it slow. It is also something of a prologue, or a prequel, and the next part will be posted to the series soon, I promise.
> 
> hope you enjoy! <3

Bucky was dancing, swirling and bouncing, a smile spreading his plush lips. His eyes had that glint in them, the one that made Steve weak at the knees, and he beckoned Steve to join him. Steve shook his head, like the idiot that he was, because he didn't know how to dance. They were in the bar down the street from their crappy apartment, and there were a lot of people here, watching others dance and laughing with their friends, so crowded that you had to brush up against people to move from one place to another. 

It was something that Steve couldn't do, no matter how much he wanted to. He didn't know how to dance, and in order for Bucky to at least begin to teach him, they would have to play the parts that a dame and a guy would. That, no matter how innocent, was illegal, and they couldn't risk it, let alone afford bail, and their reputations would be shot. 

Bucky's face faltered, but only for a second, and he stopped dancing, stepping up to the bar where Steve was sitting, drinking cheap ale, leaning in close. 

“No one will see.” he murmured, and Steve choked on the mouthful of ale, swallowing hard and coughing slightly. “There's no one here to watch!” Bucky said, and he spread his arms, stepping backwards, blindly. Steve gasped, opening his mouth to warn Bucky that he was going to run into some poor dame, but he stopped short. 

He was right. There was no one in the building except for them. Steve looked around, blushed, and nodded slowly, getting to his feet. 

Bucky stood in the center of the floor, luminated by brightly coloured lights. His hair, short and tousled, fell over his forehead attractively, a pretty chesnut colour. He was dressed in a pair of well-fitting worn slacks, and a white button down shirt tucked under suspenders that were black as ink. Though the shirt was loose, it only accentuated his build, the one that Steve would never have, but loved to observe, mostly so that he could draw Bucky when Bucky wasn't looking. He stood with his feet together, left hand extended to Steve. 

Dream a little Dream of Me started to play, and Steve, if he wasn't such a hopeless romantic at heart, would have cringed at the cheesiness of the situation. As it was, he definitely was a hopeless romantic, and instead of cringing, he felt his chest heat up, and he took Bucky's hand. It was warm, and soft, though his palm had calluses from the backbreaking work he did every day, and Steve swallowed, more nervous than he'd been in a long time. 

Bucky grinned, and though it was his trademark smirk that could get into any dame's skirts within a few minutes, Steve saw that there was something a little more genuine underneath, hidden and masked, just so that Steve would be the only one to see. Bucky led Steve's other hand to his waist, because Steve was at least a head and a half shorter than Bucky, and Bucky's hand slid onto his shoulder. 

Then they were dancing, and Steve was exhilirated, partially because he was dancing, and he'd never been able to do it before, but mostly because he was dancing for the first time with the love of his life, and it was okay. No one was watching, no one was going to call the cops, no one was going to scream fags at them. It was just them, and Steve was overwhelmingly happy for it. 

“I love you,” Steve breathed, and Bucky flushed pink and his smile grew. He leaned down and oh, gosh, he was going to kiss Steve--

He was shoved back with an incredible amount of force. When he looked at Bucky, hurt and confused, Bucky was glaring at him, a butcher knife sticking crudely out of his chest, blood dripping steadily down his front, staining his shirt. He stepped forward, as if he wasn't probably going to die, as if he couldn't feel the knife, and he leaned down to Steve, grabbing the back of his neck like he always did when he wanted to get a point across. 

“Why'd you go and say that, Stevie?” he asked, voice low and rough. He straightened up and gestured to the knife sticking out of him. “Look at what you caused.” 

Suddenly the bar was filled with people, but they were all dead silent, staring down at Steve accusingly. Steve was shoved down onto his knees by someone behind him, and he gasped as he collided harshly with the rough hardwood floor. He snapped his head up, looking at Bucky, horrified and scared. Bucky stepped back once and shook his head, before someone ran up behind him, driving a thinner but longer blade through his back, stabbing him clean through. 

Bucky gasped, his eyes wide, and blood spilled from his lips, and he choked on it. He dropped to his knees too, looking down dumbly at the blades sticking out of his chest, and only when he looked back at Steve did he start to vocalise the pain. The sound that tore its way out of Bucky's throat was raw and wounded and animalistic, piercing into Steve like the knives through Bucky. 

The sound was choked off, though, from the blood in Bucky's throat, and he collapsed, moans of agony gurgling through the hot, sticky blood in his lungs. Steve scrambled to his side, touching his chest, hands slick with Bucky's blood that was so crimson, so vivid, that everything was black and white in comparison. He started to cry Bucky's name, pleading him not to die, but nothing came out. He looked into Bucky's face. Bucky's eyes were in colour, so so blue, a blue that Steve couldn't replicate or find anywhere else, and they were starting to fade. 

Someone grabbed his jaw and forced him to look up into their eyes, and it was a man who had no skin, no flesh on his face, and his skull was red, his dark eyes peering out cruelly at Steve, the expression amused and gleeful. Acid tears, hard and hot as bullets, poured down Steve's face, but he daren't sob or whimper. 

“Wake up,” the man with no flesh growled. His lipless mouth curled into a grin that stretched past his cheeks, past his ears, until his head was cut in half with the magnitude of his smile. He started to roar into Steve's face, spraying him with blood that Steve knew was Bucky's. “Wake up, wake up, WAKE UPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWA--” 

~

“Soldier.” 

He blinked, though his eyelids were dry and they stung like lemon in a papercut. His pupils contracted and expanded in attempts to find the proper amount of dilation, and once they had, he managed to focus on the man who was standing in front of him, holding open a ruby red notebook with a black star in the center. He was wearing what looked like military clothing, khaki pants and shirt, but instead of being camo, they were black and had a red squid adorning the front, with a skull for a head. 

Right. Hydra. Nazis. Bad people. Very bad people. They had him, and he couldn't break free, and he just had to work on not succumbing to whatever they were trying to do. Bucky would find him. He'd come and bring him home, and they would have hot chocolate with whipped cream even though they couldn't affor--

Steve screamed, back arching, straining against the leather binds that kept him strapped into a metal chair. There was an ice cold metal plate covering the left side of his face, from the top of forehead to just below his cheekbone. Another plate, white hot, was covering the right side of his face, from just below his cheekbone to the edge of his jaw. That was where the pain was coming from, and it was inside his brain, somehow, and he couldn't stand it, he needed it to end--

“Soldier.” The man said again, and Steve realised that he could breathe again. He sobbed, too weak to try and pull at the leather binds. He wasn't speaking English, Steve could recognise that, the words were too thick and rough to be English. He didn't know what language it was, and he didn't know how he could understand it, but everything else was just as fucked up, so he didn't try to waste time considering it. 

“Yes,” Steve gasped, in the language that wasn't english. His throat was like sandpaper, and his words came out as such, but he didn't think that these Hydra bastards were going to let him drink any water anytime soon. The man holding the notebook looked please at Steve's voice, and he looked down into the notebook. Steve closed his eyes, because looking at the notebook made him feel uneasy, and besides, his eyes hurt. Actually, all of him hurt, but his eyes were the most prominent source of pain at the moment. 

“Longing,” the man read out, loud and clear, and Steve clenched his fists, the strength to thrash and shout suddenly surging through him. 

“Rusted.” the man continued. Steve started to scream again, the sound ripping his throat to shreds. Bucky, he told himself. Think of Bucky. Think of his smile. Think of his laughter. “Furnace. Daybreak. Seventeen. Benign. Nine. Homecoming. One. Freight car.”

His eyes went blank, his screaming lost on the way to his mouth. He went lax, staring unseeing at the roof of the tall, concrete room he was imprisoned in. He blinked, once, twice, slowly. The pain was gone, but so was every other sensation. His tongue touched the roof of his mouth and he swallowed. 

Who was he supposed to remember? What was his name? 

“Soldier.” a man said, wearing black army gear with a crimson squid on the front with a skull for a head. He looked into the man's dark eyes, vision focusing rapidly. 

He managed to gather enough saliva to spit at the man. “Fuck you,” he growled. Bucky. Bucky. Think of Bucky and his smile, his laughter, his voice. The man sighed, and gestured towards other people that Steve couldn't see. 

The plates came back onto Steve's face. He shivered at the contrast in temperatures, and then the pain set in, and he screamed for Bucky, screamed for his ma, screamed for anyone, until he passed out. 

~

Bucky was asleep on their couch, which wasn't so much of a couch anymore, more of a wooden frame with some fabric pulled over springs, and Steve was leaning against the wall, smiling at him. His hair was a complete mess, the sunlight pouring in on his face and making his sunkissed skin glow. His knuckles brushed the ground, his torso bare, toned back facing up. He wore a pair of slacks that weren't fit for outside their small apartment, but that Steve thought looked just as good anyway. 

Then again, Bucky could wear a plastic bag and Steve'd still think he was incrediibly good-looking. 

Steve stepped further into the living room, passing Bucky to get into the kitchen. He was holding his sketchbook, which had a new drawing of Bucky dancing with a faceless dame, and Steve was particulary proud of it. He dropped it onto the counter with a quiet thump, and reached up to a cupboard that was far above him, fingers brushing the tin they kept the coffee in. He hissed as he stretched, knowing he was too short, but trying anyway. 

The tin teetered on the edge, then dropped with a loud crash onto the floor, the lid popping off. Steve gasped, but there were no coffee grounds inside. He scrambled to look inside better, but there was nothing. Bucky grunted from the other roo, getting to his feet and shuffling towards Steve. 

Correction; there was nothing inside the rusted tin, apart from a silver pistol that looked brand new, and Steve, without understanding how, knew that it was loaded with one bullet. 

“Hey, punk, what're you--” 

BANG.

Bucky dropped to the ground like a ragdoll, blood oozing out of the back of his skull onto the ground. His eyes stared up, unseeing and glassy. There was a hole directly between them, like the center of a target, and there was a splatter of blood on the opposite wall, chunks of brain and skull stuck to the white paint. 

Steve dropped the gun, shaking, tears pouring down his face like acid, and he heard someone whining, or, rather, something. He realised with mild shock that it was him making the sound, and he collapsed against the wall, the whining very quickly becoming howls of anguish. 

Longing. Rusted. Furnace. Daybreak. Seventeen. Benign. Nne. Homecoming. One. Freight Car.

The Soldier was confused. Why was he crying? He wiped his cheeks away, standing, expression terrifyingly blank. He looked down at the body in front of him, the puddle of crimson blood spreading further and further with each second. Something was nagging in the back of The Soldier's mind, but he ignored it, stepping over the body and leaving the dingy apartment that held no place for him anymore. 

~

“He's dead, you know.” Zola said casually. The Soldier looked up at him, unsure of who he was speaking about. Zola looked up over the crimson notebook with the black star. “James Barnes. Bucky. Your friend. The one you love so much.” 

James Barnes...Bucky? The Soldier felt memories, something he was not permitted, start to slide back into place. He looked away from Zola, scared that he would see and he would know. 

“It's fine, we're going to wipe you anyway. Let it happen.” Zola sighed, and he returned his gaze to the crimson notebook. The Soldier obeyed. 

Bucky.

“Yes. He's dead. Crashed one of our ships into the ocean. He drowned.” Zola said flatly, as if this was boring information. “I'm telling you this because I want to know if you will comply with losing your memories.” 

Steve looked up from his food. They were sitting in a cafeteria sort of area, but Steve and Zola were the only two in attendance, and Steve was the only one eating. Zola tossed over a pair of dogtags, and Steve carefully picked them up. They were Bucky's. That was the proof, because of course they knew that Steve would need proof. His heart shattered, piercing him with excruciating pain, and he dropped the dogtags and pushed away his food. 

“Take them away.” Steve hissed, tears burning his eyes. “I don't want to remember him. I want you to make sure that I never remember him.” Zola nodded, took the dogtags, and stood, closing the notebook with a little snap. Steve got to his feet too, miserable, but glad that he wasn't going to remember anything. He should be dead alongside Bucky. At least this way, the part of him that belonged to Bucky would be dead, in a sense.

This time, when they wiped him, it didn't hurt at all, but he still screamed, because Bucky was dead, and he'd never said a damn thing about how he felt.

**Author's Note:**

> please, honestly, and kindly, tell me what you thought. it's okay if you say you hated it, but maybe tell me why you hated it so that I can improve. 
> 
> ALSO you can request fics if you'd like. comment what you wanna see, if you wanna see more, and I'll probably do it. 
> 
> kudos is appreciated!


End file.
